AWM Book Review

Journeys of Women in Science and Engineering: No Universal Constants

Susan A. Ambrose, Kristin L. Dunkle, Barbara B. Lazarus, Indira Nair, and Deborah A. Harkus, editors. Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1997. 461+xxii. ISBN 1-56639-528-3 (paper), $27.95; ISBN 1-56639-527-5 (cloth), $84.50.

From: AWM Newsletter, November/December 2000.

Reviewed by: Marge Murray, Book Review Editor, Department of Mathematics, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061-0123; email: murray@calvin.math.vt.edu.

Ever since I was a child I have had a keen interest in biography, and as an adult I have been especially interested in biographies of women. Over the past twenty years, the evolving genre of feminist biography has produced a whole host of books and articles in which the personal and professional struggles of modern women are viewed through the lens of women's historical struggle against discrimination and sexism. The very best of these biographies carefully examine the interplay between the personal and the professional, emphasizing the innovative and unconventional routes by which creative women have sought fulfillment in their public and private lives.

As Book Review Editor for this Newsletter over the past five years or so, I have indulged this longtime fascination of mine by regularly reviewing biographies and biographical anthologies dealing with the lives and careers of women in mathematics and the sciences. The good news is that there is now a steady supply of biographical material available for young women seeking female role models in the sciences. The bad news is that while many of these books do an acceptable job of communicating the ethnic diversity of women in the mathematical and scientific communities, other issues of diversity, such as sexual orientation or physical disability, are generally not addressed.

So I am especially delighted to recommend Journeys of Women in Science and Engineering: No Universal Constants . The spirit of this book is aptly conveyed by its subtitle. The eighty-eight profiles in this volume display the astonishing variety and diversity of women in science. The backgrounds of the book's editors --- in history and anthropology, public policy, community activism, and, of course, the sciences --- are correspondingly diverse. Deciding which women should be included in this collection was a daunting and time-consuming task. In the book's preface, the editors write:

Rather than emphasize traditional markers of achievement, we wanted to focus in this book on how women define success for themselves. The reader will find here stories of individual women who have won Nobel prizes and other distinctions, and many stories of women who have found satisfaction in engineering and science without becoming famous. . . . Choosing whom to include was not easy. We began with the idea of balancing the fields and subfields in which our women were practicing while assuring that there was sufficient diversity in their back- grounds and lifestyles. To begin collecting this group, we solicited nominations from dozens of well-known professionals, as well as from students and younger women, to see whom they might have found particularly inspiring themselves. . . . We received more than a thousand enthusiastic nominations, more than we could possibly use. (pp. xvi-xvii)

The profiles are arranged alphabetically by surname --- a decision that was made once the editors realized that "no matter how broad our [disciplinary] categories. . .there were some women whose work simply would not fit into such arbitrary pigeonholes" (p. xvii). Each profile is four to ten pages long, written entirely in the first person, although substantially based upon information gathered in an interview setting. At the conclusion of each profile, there is information about the individual woman's date and place of birth, education, area of professional activity, and personal life (including details about partners, children, and even pets).

The editors clearly made an effort to display a variety of personal and professional backgrounds. For example, marine science educator Judith Vergun was employed as a fashion model for fifteen years and her profile is accompanied by a photograph from her modeling days in the 1960s. Mathematician Bonnie Shulman graduated from Bronx High School of Science and spent the next twelve years "hitchhiking. . .studying beat poetry, writing, and living on welfare as a single mom" before returning to college at the age of thirty (p. 355). In one particularly unusual cluster of profiles, computer scientists Deborah and Judy Estrin discuss their own careers and the influence of their mother, bioengineer Thelma Estrin, who is also included in this collection. Women with disabilities are exceptionally candid in their assessment of the impact of these challenges upon their personal and professional lives. Especially noteworthy is the profile of the biologist Jane Dillehay; deaf since birth, she has risen to the position of Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Gallaudet University in Washington, DC. Psychiatric geneticist Judith Badner speaks frankly in her profile about her experiences growing up with achondroplastic dwarfism, and the ways in which dwarfism shaped her educational, professional, and personal choices.

Many, indeed most, books on women in the sciences tend to stress that, despite working in male-dominated fields, women scientists are in most other respects quite traditionally female. For example, in her book Women of Mathematics: The Addition of Difference , Claudia Henrion states matter-of-factly, "most women mathematicians are married, and usually happily so" (1997: p. 81). What I find most refreshing about Journeys of Women in Science and Engineering is the sheer variety of lifestyles among the women profiled. Several of the women --- perhaps the majority --- are heterosexually married; but several of them live apart from their husbands, whether by choice or necessity. And there are numerous profiles of lesbian women working in the sciences, including biologist Anne Fausto-Sterling, noted for her work on gender and science; renowned breast cancer surgeon Dr. Susan Love; organic chemist Tami Spector; and epidemiologist Donna Speigelman.

The book includes profiles of several women in the sciences who can reasonably be considered celebrities. Dr. Susan Love has been the subject of numerous newspaper and magazine articles, especially in magazines concerned with women's health. Former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders and Air Force Secretary Sheila Widnall gained notoriety for their work in government, while Nobel prize winning medical physicist Rosalyn Yalow and biologist and university president Jewel Plummer Cobb have gained fame in the academic community. At the same time, there are numerous profiles of young scientists just starting out in their careers, including academic scientists with eclectic interests who have not yet attained tenure.

There is considerable ethnic diversity among the interviewees as well. The African-American women featured in this volume include pioneers such as Elders and Cobb, who came of age professionally in the decades immediately following World War II; and much younger women just starting out in their careers, like civil engineer Katrina Washington, who works for the North Carolina Department of Transportation. Several women scientists of Native American, Asian, and Hispanic descent, hailing from a wide variety of backgrounds, are also included in these pages.

One of the great assets of this book is its 31-page introductory essay, "Women, Science, Engineering, and Technology through the Ages," which provides a comprehensive introduction to the history of women in science and technology. The book's concluding bibliography, while not exhaustive, provides a good starting point for further reading on gender and science. This volume also includes a "Field Index," where the women profiled are categorized by their scientific specialties. This is a wonderful idea, but the index seems to me to be significantly flawed. For example, under the heading "Mathematics," seven names are listed, all of them under the subcategory "Applied Mathematics." But only three of these women --- Karen Uhlenbeck, Bonnie Shulman, and Lillian Wu --- are indisputably mathematicians. The others are variously in computer science, civil engineering, and zoology! (I must confess that I have not checked the other categories in the Field Index for accuracy.)

The greatest drawback of this book is the prohibitively expensive price of the hardcover edition. On the other hand, the paperback edition is durably printed and bound, and seems to me to be a very good investment for any young woman contemplating a career in the sciences. While the profiles in this book are easily accessible to high school students, the book is probably best suited to undergraduate women as they contemplate their educational and career options in the sciences. But even well-established professionals will take courage and inspiration from the diverse lives of women in science profiled in these pages.